An Indian tech worker has been sentenced to two years and eight months in jail in Singapore for unauthorized access and damaging his former employer’s computer system. Kandula Nagaraju, 39, was found guilty on June 10 after hacking and deleting 180 servers at NCS, an information communication and technology services company, resulting in nearly SGD918,000 (US$700,000) in damages.
Nagaraju was part of a 20-member team responsible for the quality assurance computer system at NCS from November 2021 to October 2022. This system was used to test new software and programs before their release. He was dismissed in October 2022 for poor performance.
Unable to find immediate employment in Singapore, Nagaraju returned to India. Between January 6 and 17, 2023, he accessed NCS’s system six times without authorization, using administrator credentials. After securing a new job in Singapore in February 2023, he returned and continued his unauthorized access, this time using the Wi-Fi of a former colleague to test scripts aimed at deleting servers.
The sabotage was detected by the company, which reported the incident to the police in April 2023. The investigation traced multiple IP addresses linked to the unauthorized access. Nagaraju’s laptop, which contained the damaging script and evidence of Google searches on deleting virtual servers, was seized by the authorities. The financial loss to NCS was determined to be SGD917,832.
In addition to the main charge, another related charge was considered during sentencing, according to Channel News Asia.
